Conclusions

Abstract

Seafarers are a vulnerable group of workers. They are made so by the organisation and structure of their employment; the prioritisation of profit over safety by the actors that engage and control their labour; by the limits of the regulatory framework that is supposedly in place to protect them; and by their weakness as collective actors in relation to capital. The consequences of this vulnerability are seen in data on their occupationally related morbidity and mortality—evidence widely acknowledged to represent only a partial picture of the extent of the physical, mental and emotional harm resulting from work at sea, but which nevertheless—as we have demonstrated in earlier chapters—ranks their occupation as among the most hazardous of work activities.

There are three kinds of people: those that are alive, those that are dead, and those that are at sea.*

(attributed to Anacharsis 6th century BC)